Discussion

Dim sum in Seattle

We are visiting for a few days and want to go with a group of friends for Dim Sum. We are centrally located downtown so are flexible on location. Can anyone give me suggestions to their favorite dim sum places?

The standard sort of snarky response to this question is that the best Dim Sum in Seattle is in Vancouver BC. I haven't really found that to be true. I think there are plenty of good Dim Sum places here.

If you are staying downtown you are just a few steps away from the International District or ID, which is like everyone else's Chinatown. You'll probably get 50 replies, each one listing a different ID place that's someone's favorite.

I live on the Eastside, which is across the lake from Seattle, so I almost never get downtown or into the ID, so I can't be of much help there. If by some chance you get across the lake, the three names that pop up the most are Top Gun (south), Noble Court (Central) and Jade Garden (way North), all east of Lake Washington. Of those, Jade Garden is my favorite. Opinions can be quite polarized about all three.

They close and change owners all the time - they seem to have done so almost an average of once every 2-3 years in the past decade. They'll be back in some other incarnation soon enough.

The trick with places like Zen Garden is to go dine there in the first couple months that they're open - when they try real hard to be good. Around the early 2000s - when they had just reopened the restaurant - the rumor was that they were able to hire a top star chef from either Vancouver or Hong Kong and the food around the time reflected that sort of prowess. But of course it didn't last long being so far away from any major Chinese immigrant enclaves.

They existed for many years as the Imperial Garden, then the space was dark for a long time, before reopening and falling into the cycle you describe.

In the days when they succeeded, there were few dining options in Mill Creek. That has changed drastically in the past ten or fifteen years. The space is large and relatively "upscale" for Chinese cuisine, and I assume it must be a fairly high overhead space to operate, so I think it presents a lot of challenges.

I can't say I can agree with that. Vancouver locations like Kirin, Sun Sui Wah, Shiang Gardens and Neptune are really on a whole another planet compared to what we have here. There is simply not the critical mass of Cantonese diaspora in the Seattle area to bring it world-class dim sum. Taiwanese / northern/central Chinese are usually the better bet around here.

I totally respect your opinion and defer to you on these matters, but I've been to Sun Sui Wah numerous times, and while it was very good, it wasn't any better than Zen Garden or even Noble Court on a good day. Even if some dishes were marginally better, I think saying it's on a whole different planet is wild overstatement and not accurate in my experience.

But I might not have tried the right dishes.

I've been to the most highly recommended places in NY, LA, SF and Vancouver and I really think we need to get over our inferiority complex in these matters. The late lamented Sentosa was as good as or better than most of them.

I completely agree with Hung Wei Lo. Growing up eating dim sum in the bay area, the places up here just cannot compare to Vancouver, Bay Area, LA. There isn't enough competition to force better quality food or service. Although Sun Sui Wah is not my favorite in Vancouver, it's still in a different league compared to places in Seattle. I'd recommend Fisherman's Terrace or Kirin in Vancouver.

That said, Jade Garden or Harbour City (across the street from Jade Garden) will do in a fix. Top Gun in Factoria would be my choice on the east side.

Christy, we frequented Koi's for a while when it first opened. The decline in both food and service was steady. We've since returned to Noble Court because it got that bad. Don't know what the name change means, maybe i'll send my husband to try again. :)

Jade Garden in the ID, as others have said, if you're looking for cheung fan, turnip cake, etc. on steam carts.

I've pretty much switched to Din Tai Fung in Bellevue, though, for my Sunday yum cha. Really the only credible xiaolongbao in the area (and I really like their spareribs, braised beef soup, veg & pork wonton in spicy sauce, etc. as well.)

I just mean yum cha in the general sense of taking tea with some gao and bao in the morning or early afternoon. I know DTF is not Cantonese dim sum, but it fills a similar place in my day. Just throwing another option out there.

We're huge fans of Jade Garden but embarassed to admit we haven't tried dim sum elsewhere in the ID. We visit Seattle a couple of times a year so we don't want a dim sum failure when we love JG so much. We're always there before 10 so, while busy, we've not had to wait.

I've read about DTF on other boards and will have to make it up there next time. But as someone said, it's not dim sum. Nor is XLB, I believe.